A place where beginners can participate, ask questions, and post their views. However, beginners typically ask a lot of questions about sources, tricks, books, and so on. In fact, all magicians are interested (or should be) in the provenance of tricks, ideas, and related matters. This department will service these needs.

Believe it or not, I've been doing magic for a hap hazard living over the past hundred years or so, and have never been able to get roughed cards to separate. And I'm talking about "factory machined" as well as cards I've prepared myself.
I've used varying degrees of "light" touch and my fingers continue slide over the pairs that I'm trying to split.
Any suggestions would be appreciated before I give up forever on the invisible deck (and the zillion other effects that use this principle).

You can experiment:
-ribbon the cards at the table and lift the card.
-do a fan, or pass cards one hand to the other an when you locate your card, pinch the border separating them and 'slide' without touching themselves.

Many thanks for the suggestions, I plan on trying all the above.
I should add that the late Sen. Crandall gave me an Invisible Card Deck that he'd corner shorted so that you could riffle the index to find the selected card, then spread to reveal. He maintained that some hands were just too dry to ever make the split. Unfortunately that deck is long gone and I've never gone to the trouble to make up another. (Dry? I live in the desert where 20% is big time humidity)

Do you have dry hands? I do and my wife introduced me to (by far) the best lotion I have ever used, it's not cheap at $20 for a 16oz. Bottle. Once applied you can rub it till it's completely dry and leaves no residue or oils on your cards
"EIDON silica and msm moisturizing lotion"